Shaping your career -tools of the trade

You are pretty sure that you have a gift. You are very good at drawing (or singing or coding or dancing or managing projects). You have also figured out that you wish to use your drawing skills for developing some characters for use in animations or in video games. (whatever basic skill you may have, you will need to figure out its end use). So far, you were happy sketching anything that took your fancy. It gives you pleasure. So continue doing that.

Since you wish to make career of sketching and drawing you need now to get a bit serious and find out what are the tools of animation or gaming trades. You will have to invest efforts and learn using those tools so well that they become your second nature. This will allow you to focus on drawing and not get bogged down by the intricacies of the tools.

If you are looking for a job in a firm which is producing games or animations the first question they will ask you will be about familiarity with the tools they use. Many of these tools like software packages and the hardware you need to run them don’t come cheap. Therefore consider doing internship or working for free where you get a chance to learn and practice them.

So get real and start investing in your career well before you write your first application.